Sunday, May 27, 2007

I haven't been working in the kitchen on the weekends, but since tomorrow is a holiday, I thought I would do some work today. I finished with the 2nd coat of primer on the ceiling and walls on Friday.

Today, Laurie and I decided to take out the old flooring. (bad idea) There was 2 layers of linoleum and what looked like a layer of tar paper under that. We had to scrape the tar paper to get it to come off. I cut the linoleum into pieces and pulled it up. (with a crowbar since it was stuck to the tar paper)

Here is Laurie with a wood chisel scraping up some of the tar paper.

Here she is using a razor blade scraper. It was a lot of hard work to scrape all of it off. It has been there since 1936, so it was really stuck to the wood.

Underneath the 3 layers is hardwood flooring. We don't know why someone would have covered them with tar paper. (Maybe they used it as a vapor barrier back then) We had thought about refinishing the hardwood, but the tar has gotten into the wood grain and we aren't sure if we would be able to get the finish to look good. It looks like new linoleum will be going down.

Last summer I went to help my friend Steve remove the carpet in the basement and underneath we found old tiles which were stuck solid with tar...what a job to remove it all!! So I know what you guys went through! lol xox

wow.that floor looks so familiar! we live in a house built in the 30's and we had the same thing in our kitchen...we got down to the tar paper and decided to hire someone to do it...He was able to sand the last bit of tar paper off and it we are so glad we now have the wood floors! it was worth the money...good luck!